Chaplain's Corner

Sermon illustrations often stick in our minds long after the sermon has been forgotten.  There is one such illustration that has stuck with me since a sermon I heard on gossip as a boy.  It goes something like this:

Once a woman came to her pastor; she was deep in conviction for being a terrible gossip.  Her gossip had hurt many and finally God’s Spirit touched her heart and troubled her so deeply about this that she was ready to repent.  She asked her pastor how she could repair all the damage she had done.  The Pastor asked her to come back the next day with a feather pillow.  The next day when she returned feather pillow in hand, the pastor led her up the narrow stairs of the bell tower.  The pastor handed the woman a pair of scissors he had brought, he asked her to cut open the pillow and to shake the feathers to the wind.  She followed his instructions without argument and after a few minutes, as the two watched the feathers being scattered by the wind the pastor said, “Now, if you can go out and gather all the feathers, you will also be able to repair all the damage your gossip has done.” 

Now, you are probably ready for me to launch into an article about gossip and although such a topic is always in order that is not my intention.  Instead I want to reflect for a bit about how far and wide our words travel without our intending or being aware.  This is especially true in this day of the internet, email and all things digital.

Back on the 2nd of November I got to the office after the weekend and I had an email from Louise Morse, a woman from the UK, who asked if she could quote me in a book that she is writing.  Quote me?  I don’t think I have ever had anyone ask if they could quote me.  It was quite a shock.  I had written an article for this column a year ago about dementia and one of the ways I had found to relate to folks that have dementia that seems helpful.  Ms. Morse had come across the article as a result of an RSS search (I have no idea what this is).  The point though is that we never quite know when, where and how our words will impact others, either as a means of blessing or a means of harm.

That is why words are so very important and how we use them so very vital.  In my work I use two primary tools, listening to the words of others and speaking my own words to others.  That’s a bit scary to think that the primary tools of a chaplain’s trade are listening and talking.  The really tricky part is to learn how to truly listen and how to know when and what to say.  Unlike your doctor that can order a CT scan to look inside your body to diagnose a problem, I have no diagnostics that I can order to look inside another’s soul.  I have no tools to peer into another’s heart.  I have no techniques that can lay open another’s spirit for my examination.   So I must rely on listening. 

Listening to another’s words; asking what they mean; probing into the sources of the fear or pain or anxiety that is generating the words is what I do.  I don’t engage in this listening and talking because I am interested in collecting juicy information about this other person.  At times, I even encourage a person I am caring for to withhold details because the details will not be useful in my caring for their spirit.  But at other times, their need to speak out the details, sometimes for the first time ever, is so important to their healing that I absorb them into my soul simply to provide them a safe place to bring painful memories into the light where they can be seen for what they are and where they can begin to lose their power.

Words have power, listening to someone else’s words is a powerfully affirming gift.  But we have all experienced the reality of talking without being heard.  You might remember the song from back in 1969 written by Harry Neilsen which starts out, “Everybody’s talking at me, I can’t hear a word they’re saying, only the echoes of my mind…”  We have all had that experience, having others talking “at” us but being unable to really hear what they are saying and the opposite of trying to talk to someone but they are not hearing a thing we say.

But what a gift we give when we stop to listen and when we open our mouths to share what is in our hearts.  A few years ago I sat by the bedside of a woman on the first floor of the hospital.  It was our first meeting and after introducing myself and asking if I might sit and visit for a few moments she began to talk to me about an incident of abuse that had happened to her 70 years earlier.  I hadn’t asked her about her history, I hadn’t even gotten to the kind of initial questions that I usually ask to discover how this woman was connected to herself, others and to God.  But whether she had read this column or someone had spoken to her about me, she just opened her heart and spilled a story of horrible abuse.  When she concluded she said, “Mr. Hirst, I have never said a word to anyone, not even my husband about this.  You are the first person I have ever talked to about what happened.”

After talking about her experience and expressing my sorrow that she endured such treatment as a child, we talked of the impact that her experience had on her life and the impact that keeping the secret all these years had on her.  Before I left her bedside I asked if I might pray with her and I asked God who knew all about her pain to whisper words of love, comfort and healing into her soul.  Thirty minutes after this encounter began I walked out of her room.  We have never met again but her words had an impact on me and I trust that mine had an impact on her and I hope the impact was for her good.   

All day long we are listening and speaking.  Some of us write letters, emails, and memos; it seems that text messaging has become the preferred means of communication these days.  Speaking and listening are such common experiences we rarely think of them as significant.  O sure, we all know the stereotypes: husbands have selective hearing or wives have something to say about everything and children, well, who knows what they hear?  But think about the words that have had a powerful impact on your life.  Think about those words that blessed you and lifted you and helped you then think about those words that cursed you, wounded you and left you hurting, maybe to this very day.  Chances are that those who uttered those words have long forgotten them, but the impact lives on.

So, remember, we never know where our words will end up.  Who could have ever guessed that a few of mine would end up in an English woman’s book on dementia?   Who would have ever guessed that a word spoken in frustration that I forget the next day got stuck in someone else’s heart and will cause a festering wound for years to come.  We just don’t know.  So maybe the sage words written back in the 1st century AD are words for us all to take to heart every day, “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak …” Thank you for listening to my words.  I feel the responsibility that comes with putting them out there for others to read.  I trust that they will bless you and I want to encourage you to listen well and speak carefully, for we never know who will be listening and what kind of impact our words might have on others, sometimes even half-way around the world.